Monday, 30 July 2018

This is the final discussion post inspired by young adult podcast YA Oughta's Mental Health episode, which featured Lydia Ruffles and Tom Pollock in conversation with Chloe Seager and Katherine Dunn, in which they talked about writing about mental illness, representation, and many other things. Towards the end of the episode, they discussed what they want to see more or less of in YA novels featuring mental illness, and I thought that would be an interesting discussion to have.What do I want to see more of?

Of those mental illnesses we see most often, more YA novels that explore other symptoms of anxiety, depression and OCD than those we see over and over again, like Hannah of Sprinkled With Words said in her guest post.

What do I want to see less of?

I want to see fewer YA novels that feature characters who stigmatise mental illness, or treat protagonists with mental illness badly, and not have it challenged or shown in some way how wrong it is.

Fewer YA novels that are problematic in terms of representation. There is already so much stigma surrounding mental illness, we don't need books which may make readers without mental illness think that those with mental illness are drama queens, or just need to pull themselves together. No books that make it seem like getting past a period of mental illness is easy - and so therefore, why were they making such a fuss in the first place?

Fewer YA novels featuring protagonists with mental illness who are privileged in every other way.

How about you guys? What do you want to see more or less of when it comes to YA novels featuring mental illness?

2 comments:

Oh I'd definitely like to see more less-privileged characters with mental health issues too! I found this really great series recently that had such good rep of depression/anxiety...but it kind of bothered me that EVERY hurdle could be sorted out with an endless stream of money?! Like that's nice but totally fantasy tbh. 😭😭

But I love your list of things you want to see more of!! I want to definitely read more mental illness in fantasy!!